impart to his spirit, I would not, by any impiety, tear from him. Cold in death is this head, not colder than that heart when living, through which no thrill of nature did ever vibrate. This has thrown the errors of my youth, and of an impulse too obedient to that affection which I still cherish, into poverty and sorrow, heightened beyond hope by the loss of him who is now in Heaven, and still more by the tender pledges he has left after him on earth. But I shall not add to these reflections the bitter remorse of inflicting even a merited calumny; and because my blood coursed through his veins, I shall not have his memory scored or tortured by the expression of my disappointment, or of the desolation which sweeps through my heart. It therefore best becomes me to say, his faith and honour in the other relations of life were just and exact; and that these may have imposed a severity on his principles and manners. The tears which now swell my eyes are those I cannot check; but they rise like bubbles on the mountain-stream, they burst never more to appear*."

By accidentally meeting a treatise on painting, the mind of Sir Joshua Reynolds was, in like manner, determined to that beautiful art, of which

*The speech of Logan, in Morse's Geography of America, has touches equally striking."

le afterwards became the boast, the honour, and the brightest ornament. To that occasionwe owe the great master of the British school; and the latter strange incident fixed the resolution of Mr. Curran to the study of eloquence. He had but to give that direction to the material which he found in his own nature; all the elements were there, and the best combinations were easily formed by the union of capacity and of desire..

It was not among the rhetoricians he formed himself, though they founded a great society in the best times of the Greek republics, and persuaded Athens to appoint them generals and am bassadors, and to confide to them the management of state affairs, under the fatal error, that because they could speak well, they could act well, and advise with discretion. Though this false and hypocritical set of jugglers ran a long race of success, yet, like every thing deceitful,' they were detected; they were exposed by one of their own sophisms, which is worth retaining for its ridicule*.

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* Epimenides was a Cretan; Epimenides said that all the Cretans were liars; Epimenides being a Cretan, all the Cretans could not be liars: therefore Epimenides was a liar: therefore all the Cretans could not be liars, et sic de cæteris.

Nor was it in those debating societies, which seem to be modelled from the early sophists, that he fed the lamp of his youthful mind. He found within himself the happy power of giving shapes and exquisite forms to the beings of his own creation. Whether passing from images of terror to the soft and tender touches of pathos; whether he sported in the laugh of comedy, or in the broad grin of farce, he was equally successful in all. If he would hurl the bolt of a Jupiter, shake thrones, and appal tyrants, you might conceive it was the work of Homer! Would he move to pity, you had all the effect of Virgil; and would he excite to mirth or laughter, you might have fancied yourself conversing with a Congreve. Such was his excellence in each of these depart ments, that he may have placed himself nearly at the head of each; yet, though he rejected with fastidiousness to form himself either on the plans. of the sophists, or of those societies which prefer words to ideas, talking to thinking, he furnished his mind from the great stores of antiquity, and enriched it with much of the best and purest modern literature. By both he chastened the wanderings of his own luxuriant imagination, and regulated the branches without injuring the tree; the sap was directed to feed the trunk, not to waste its aliment in idle foliage, or in gaudy flowers.

The history of the babyism of a boy can never be sufficiently interesting to excite minute attention. Though it is said of some one that he never was a child, yet anecdotes of infancy, if attainable, should be confined to the nurseries, where they may, like the legends of fairies, make an intellectual repast for gossips and fond mothers.

It is now of little value to be informed, that Cato gave indications of his firmness by not evincing or shewing any signs of fear, when he was held out of a window: equally so to learn, that Pascall was flung out on a dunghill by his parents, doubtful, from his deformity, to what class of animals he properly belonged, till philosophy decided, and claimed him as her own. Man, like history, has its obscure periods; Hume has passed by the early stages of society with a sweeping observation, that the records of such times are scanty and scarcely worth noticing, or if preserved, not worthy of attention.

There exists a parody by Mr. Curran, of the Seven Ages of Shakespear; some part of the order there adopted I mean to pursue in the division of this labour, intending to use the freedom of being occasionally unconfined by the exact regularity of time. In the second stage, we find Mr. Curran in Trinity College, Dublin, and in all the green of youth. One of those works which

early attracted his attention, was Rousseau's Eloise. The romance of this extraordinary production fevered his imagination, and, aided by the warmth of its diction, he made some improvident and unhallowed engagements. The board of senior fellows, the moral and literary censors of that learned society, conceiving some great scandal offered to the purity of their moral, (and it being true as reported;) summoned the young delinquent before their Areopagus, who, in his own words, appeared as Horace did on his first introduction to the court of Augustus, pauca et singultim locutus. The culprit stood before them in all that may be conceived lacrymose in feature, penitent in exterior, yet internally unmoved. After a long lecture, delivered in Hebrew, and explained into Greek, the accusation amounted in plain English to this, that he kept idle women in his chambers, and concluded according to the form of the statute and good morals. He saw he had no way to escape but by the exercise of his wit, and he quickly made a somerset, by assuring them that the accusation was utterly unfounded, as he never in his life kept any women idle in his rooms.

An examination for fellowships about this time taking place, where the severest trial in logics, metaphysics, mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, the Newtonian system, &c. &c., as also